I’m a person who walks around with a generally dispassionate view of the cosmic scheme of things (intelligent design over moralistic whatever), and yet my Golden Globe reactions last night were punctuated with several emotional “thank God!” exclamations.
Largely, I admit, in response to this or that Golden Globe nominee losing or being ignored. Otherwise I nodded, grunted, chortled and groaned.
Congrats to Team Hamnet for taking the Best Motion Picture — Drama trophy. This happened, of course, because of the emotional power punch of the final 15 minutes. I accept this cause-and-effect.
I would have voted for the far-more-elegant, way-more-penetrating Sentimental Value, but that’s me.
My final client of the night, a very bright and emotionally upbeat Stratford resident, said he didn’t actually know what Hamnet is. (Until I gave him the rundown.) I’m sorry but award-season hoopla just doesn’t matter much to even well-educated Average Joes. Now more than ever, I mean.
Congrats to Timothee Chalamet and Jessie Buckley for winning in their respective categories.
The GG loonies actually placed If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, arguably the most exasperating and emotionally suffocating misery–virus film of 2025, in the Musical + Comedy realm. Rose Byrne brought the mute nostril agony like no other actress last year, and she took the M + C Best Actress award…gaaahh!
I was able to accept Paul Thomas Anderson’s Best Director win for One Battle After Another (which won the top prize in the musical + comedy category) as a kind of career achievement, gold-watch thing, He’s 55, has been on the phenomenal auteur path since the mid ‘90s, has a snow-white beard, etc.
There’s no point in my mentioning that OBAA is a financial failure and a lefty-bubble phenomenon. It’s basically Crash, and I don’t mean Cronenberg.
But PTA snatching the Best Screenplay trophy away from both Sentimental Value’s Eskil Vogt and Joachim Trier and Marty Supreme’s Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie struck me as nutso, given the ludicrous construction and arc of Sean Penn’s Colonel Lockjaw character.
Yesterday afternoon I was openly praying for the absurdly over-praised Sinners to be blanked in the merit realm, and it was! No Best Screenplay award!
Ludwig Goransson’s Best Original Score trophy aside, Sinners’ only other win was basically a Joe and Jane Popcorn attaboy back-pat thing — i.e., a GG Cinematic and Box-Office Achievement award.
Thank God Sentimental Value’s Stellan Skarsgard won for Best Supporting Actor. I was afraid that Value might be shut out entirely due to the dull-witted slow boaters…the none-too-brights who lack the sensitivity to comprehend and appreciate what Joachim Trier’s Grand Prix winner gently probes and reveals.
GG voters declared last night that OBAA’s Teyana Taylor (whose “Perfidia Beverly Hills” performance is okay but no great shakes) is more deserving of their Best Supporting Actress trophy than Weapons’ Amy Madigan or Sentimental Value’s Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas? Yeah, but for bullshit reasons.
They went for Taylor because (a) they needed a significant non-white winner and (b) because they couldn’t pronounce, much less spell, Inga’s middle and last names.
